Is Crypto Bipartisan Now? | Roundup

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the funny part about the logic of like they're buying crypto to buy traditional assets is I is I do think there is some logic to that in a limited sense like I don't think people are going to sell crypto to buy stocks but I think people are buying you know in some exactly like they're like houses are so [ __ ] expensive and we have no shot to ever buy one that the only way that I can possibly have that chance is to be early to crypto and you know like I think that says a lot about where people's heads are at in terms of you know they're willing to take chances they're willing to do whatever it takes just so that they could buy a house like their parents did and still like most of them are not going to be able to do that

pretty wild hey everyone this episode is brought to you by say the Blazing fast parallelized blockchain which is unlocking salonik performance for the vast ocean of eth devs out there now you're going to be hearing all about say and their new V2 upgrade but if you take away one thing evm is here to stay there are some problems with it which we're going to get into later in the episode but say and especially their V2 upgrade is helping solve that so thank you very much say for making this episode possible hey everyone wanted to give a quick shout out to this episode sponsor flood protocol the optimal decks aggregator now if you are a listener of bell curve you know that meev is a massive problem which is why we are so pumped to partner up with flood on this season flood is the only gasless and

meev free aggregator that not only gets you the best execution but also gives you back all the extra Surplus that you create every single time you swap now this is relevant for both swappers and developers but you're going to be hearing all about them later in the program so for now thank you flood and back to the show all right everyone welcome back to another episode of bell curve before we jump in quick disclaimer the views expressed by my co-host today are their personal views and they do not represent the views of any organization with which the co-hosts are associated with uh nothing in the episode is construed or relied upon as Financial technical tax legal or other you know the deal now let's jump into the episode all right everyone welcome back

to another Roundup edition of vur yeah Michaels one and two Vance all of us consensus list this week fellas how we doing doing well doing well it's probably hot in Austin by the way toasty hot in San Francisco it is it is glal warming what what have we uh what have we heard about consensus this week I I saw cus and Marvin am Mori I don't know how to pronounce his name he's the general counsel Unis yep yep Unis swap um Chief legal officer general counsel uh Unis swap Labs Unis swap Foundation can't remember which ones for for each but I think it's Unis swap Labs

um I obviously didn't hear the debate but the debate premise was uh crypto is bipartisan as represented by Marvin and crypto is partisan as represented by Ryan and I think we probably have a perspective on where Ryan falls on partisan side um but I think the only I mean the takeaway that I had just from that reading the fact that there is a debate going on at consensus is like there's actually a debate to be made right now whereas 10 days ago no one would take the Marvin side um but at least now there's the possibility of having that conversation I I still think and there's been a number of other you know perspectives that came out after that

uh debate was promoted on Twitter of just like all the things that the Democrats are still doing to prevent crypto um you know and the list is is still vast um you know think about all the lawsuits that are going on the wells notices that have been delivered um to foundations uh or or different companies that are um issuing networks um all the while you have Hester purse sitting on stage also at consensus talking about how we need to build a regulatory sandbox between the US and the UK so that we can have you know Innovation exist and not you know unfairly overly regulate uh early stage companies as they're trying to you know get to the

point of decentralization or get to the point of Regulation um that they would need to be so I I think all of this is you know once again just continuing with the movement in the right direction but um yeah it's going to be interesting to see how all this plays out you know there was also the rumor that uh the Biden Administration in the last two weeks has started reaching out to um that people in the crypto Community I don't know what that means who that is but uh you know asking for insight asking for perspective on on how to work with the industry so I I'm sure that you know the debate between Ryan and Marvin was uh was a good one um but it's still feels like the Democrats at least are

are playing pretty deep catchup here yeah and uh I think the the celus position is obviously like very Republican the Marvin position is very Democrat in some ways but it it's more like uh like Marvin's not an idiot he's a very smart guy and I think it's more so like look we've got this Elizabeth Warren siiz problem in the Democratic party but all of these Democrats are not created equal like you have people like Richie Torres and you have you know people that are that are reasonable uh that have voted for things like fit 21 or the sabb repeal and so like he does have some pretty good points um but I do think there is an element to like a you have to call off the dogs on like the

list of things that Scott Johnson put forward which is very long but also like you have things like the industry sweeps the rfis like those are just like you know like they're technically you know uh optional but if you don't do them you're in trouble um and so like those things need to stop but I don't know I don't blame people for thinking it's just too little too late like we've now got you know what four and a half five months until the election I don't know hard to undo four years damage in that that span of time I think the interesting debate to be had around this and this came I saw Jeff John Roberts did some live tweeting there was a thread we can link in the

show notes where he gave the high level but the the celus argument boils down to Trump is with us and generally the Republicans have been much more Pro crypto and if you look at the way that Tech gets adopted it's mostly this sort of partisan issue and then what it sounded like Marvin was voicing it's hard to know everyone's got their own political bias here so it's hard to really know it's like do we really want to be neutral or you just actually uh more left leaning but his argument seemed to be like we don't want to make this apart as an issue these issues rotate across parties over you know yearl long period anyway like we should just uh have this be a nonpartisan thing I I still am not 100% sure where I fall on that there there it seems like there are some Industries which are like

Silicon Valley like very left leaning there are other Industries like the gun industry which is like super right leaning but then there are a lot of industries that kind of fall somewhere in the middle of both those two things um and so how would you describe the finance industry I that's actually the one that I was thinking um I don't know uh I I think it's actually pretty bipartisan like I used to think of it as much more of it but I kind of think of it as pretty neutral for the most part I mean I think it's one of the few industries that you can point to and say it's the size that it is but it also has members of that industry with the individual influence that they do have on both sides of the aisle I I I actually think uh my my like perspective

here generally is that over time crypto will become more and more bipartisan as more and more people recognize that it's just a technology and it's just an industry and frankly it represents growth I think for the time being there's there's been this miscalculation on you particularly the Dem credit side about how you know this industry is perceived maybe it's a lack of understanding of the technology maybe it's a lack of understanding of the potential of what it represents but over time I think people will start to recognize that this is just a technology it's something that will improve finance and financial services over the long run and that should exist in in the United States period full stop um and and not something that gets pushed outside the

United States inherently uh but I think you know what we're talking about here is whether or not we frankly have enough time before November uh 5th or 6 whatever the election date is I think that's that's the big question at hand and I'm I'm not sure that we do the hour grows late on the uh reconciliation efforts but like the other thing is that um early voting starts in September yeah so it's like yeah the election's five months away but like the election's really like three months away and from a new cycle perspective the election is a month away like debate start it's going to be all you see if it's even possible to see more of it than like the Trump trial I think it's just going to be mainlining you know all the other thing I'll add here is like we

I know we're kind of like using the election as a euphemism for the presidential election there are so many other elections that are important to crypto that are going on where it where it may be a senator a congress person or um you know even local elections uh that will come up in November um and I know you know one thing that we should talk about is uh I saw both Ripple and Andre um committed another 25 million I'm not sure if that is an addition to what they've already put in but I mean that that builds a massive war chest for fairshake and fair Shake I know you know is is obviously focused on you know some of the more uh you know presidential level issues but they're focused on a

lot of you know the the smaller campaigns as well and people like Richie Torres in New York you know um Ron widen who's a pro you know open source uh um senator of Oregon um you know there there are people in California that are pro Innovation I know Rana um from the San Jose area um as a representative down there like there are a lot of positive perspectives on both sides of the aisle when it comes to Congress people or or senators and I think that's you know the other big call out here it's not just Democrat versus Republican it it may be that perspective on the presidential side but it's definitely not when it comes to Congress yeah I think there's we we talked on uh

last week with the eth ETF approval that there might have been a little bit of a loss of Innocence at the SEC that you know you Gary gendler had been making all these technical arguments about why they couldn't pass eth y y and then as soon as the political wind shifted it was like oh none of that actually matters it's like well and wait is this really how it works and what we're all doing here there might be a little bit of that with crypto as well which is like oh there's a100 million doll behind this suddenly these arguments are sound a lot better on the politicians want to get involved now you know wonder wonder how that happens wonder how that funny how that happens uh but you know there was also another uh Michael you made a really interesting point just there about growth um about recognizing crypto

as a growth industry did either you guys follow Joseph Wang or fed guy on Twitter yeah yep yeah he used to be a a Trader at the fed and he wrote this piece this week that I thought was super interesting uh it's called crypto rebalancing as as far as I know this is the first time that Joseph has ever written about crypto uh and the argument that he makes is is a turning bullish on crypto but the idea is that um actually there's a lot of wealth that gets created in crypto and crypto investors tend to be primarily momentum driven and part of what's giving crypto momentum right now is exactly what we're describing um so there's been a change in the winds politically in terms of crypto um you've got people like the

Wisconsin State Pension Fund that are that are buying he makes this really interesting point here which is that there's I guess good evidence that when crypto people generate wealth they actually rotate that a little bit into equities but primarily into housing and he made this he made the argument actually that as as wealth is generated in crypto it's going to be a Tailwind for trafi assets also which is okay I me lost me there yeah uh it's basically yeah so um but I mean look it's just an interesting argument you know I haven't seen this kind of stuff come out of first thing about Joseph Wang is that I mean I think this is uh first half I think this piece is

great second half TBD but like he doesn't really miss on his calls or at least in the past two years um so I think I would take this very seriously but I mean I think it's like a very simple story where it's just like young people and more diverse people like crypto more and I think you whatever window dressing you want around it or like you know write whatever article you want to explain it but the it's very simple the outcome it's just like this asset class is very popular and it's not going away so so uh I I haven't read this article this the first I've heard of it but I will um one one question that I was

actually having a discussion about over the weekend was what do you like do we know any of the um socioeconomic breakdown uh or or status of people who own crypto and you know the the numbers that have come out of the polling um I think that Paradigm put together was like 30 something percent of people between the ages of 18 and 45 on crypto what we do know is that 51% the top basically the top 51% from a socioeconomic status in the United States are the same demographic own stocks own equities um it's a lot harder to find you know similar breakdowns for housing um but it's interesting to think about you know is this something and

what that chart that you just had up there might um suggest is that the people that own equities are the highest owners of crypto as well uh and you know what that implies is that it's it's not you know the it's the it's the more wealthy participants in the economy that are the biggest owners of crypto assets just as they are the biggest owners of stocks and you know you would expect that to be the case but it's not like there's a massive Divergence between asset classes which I think is is some of the narrative that you get that you hear about with crypto that it's you know it's for you know $500 trying to punt it around to make 50,000 um but I think what we're starting to see here is

that this becomes an asset class that investors view in the same way that they view equities which I think is a major you know Divergence of what you know the narrative has been yeah I've always you know there people talked about Bitcoin for a long time as being this uh like uncorrelated asset and that was a really attractive narrative for a while but I I think that if crypto fits within this broader allocation bucket that these huge pools of money have and people start to think of it within a framework I think that's actually that's not a bad thing I think that's that's a good thing for the most part kind of like graduating and and think about it in in the same sense of what's happened over the last uh I guess 20 years give or take is you've gone

from 40,000 publicly traded companies to 4,000 uh and and a lot of the consolidation the growth that's happened in the economy has been concentrated in a much fewer set of opportunities to invest in on the equity side whereas this represents something that's new it's new asset class it's you know in the process of of being defined as one you know probably with with some sort of regulatory change and it's obviously skewing towards younger people because they're internet native and so they're going to obviously get this first but I think that this becomes kind of a new asset category especially for you know the biggest participants who are going to become the biggest parts of the electorate over the next you know decade I agree with that and I was just

reading uh I don't want to do this live here but I saw this what Joseph was linking there linked to a broader study about who owns crypto in the US and with the exception of people who adopted early and basically made a bunch of money it just mimics um like what Equity ownership looks like which is interesting the the the funny part about the logic of like they're buying crypto to buy traditional assets is I is I do think there is some logic to that in a limited sense like I don't think people are going to sell crypto to buy stocks but I think people are buying you know in some exactly like they're like houses are so [ __ ] expensive and we have no shot to ever buy one that the only way that I can possibly have that chance is

to be early to crypto and you know like I think that says a lot about where people's heads are at in terms of you know they're willing to take chances they they're willing to do whatever it takes just so that they could buy a house like their parents did and still like most of them are not going to be able to do that pretty wild I was that's what I was goingon to say in the study that resonates with me it it doesn't quite pass the sniff test that I know a lot of people that like take their crypto games and rotate into equities I I just feel like that doesn't happen quite as much but it definitely happens that people take crypto gains and rotate that into real estate yeah so the barbell strategy a commonly used one yeah I mean it's uh it's interesting though

like you know if you've ever sold crypto and put a bunch of cash in your bank account you have this moment where you're like yes and then you're like wait what what do I do with this like do you go buy a house like you're gonna go buy like you know Magnificent Seven you can go look like an equally bad basket of like traditional Finance Investments like at least with a house you're like you know this is my house and like no one can force me out of here and I don't have to pay rent to anybody else but like the thing you realize when you sell crypto you know if you ever have is that there's really not great Investments anywhere else and and also like you have zero Edge in those other

assets yeah so speaking of great Investments do you guys see igy aselia launched a mcoin this week where can we get a can we get a price chart of where this thing's at today yeah let me let me let me grab it um I imagine you gota go a deck screener for something like this but yeah and there's I guess there were actually two all right so there were two different celebrities that got involved with meme coins there was K Jenner who I saw a tweet out about pump. fun do you see this um and then there was IG aelia who's been going ham and there's the there's the sanctioned Iggy aelia meme coin which is Mother and then there's another one which is Iggy which not

going lie I didn't look too deeply into this but is apparently not the legitimate igas Alia mem coin if such phras said the wrong ig me coin hi everyone want to give a big shout out to today's title sponsor SE now I want to talk to you guys a little bit about why I think SE is cool from a design standpoint a big problem that it solves for eevs out there and then some cool stuff that se has coming up the reason I like say from an architecture perspective is again it's a very fast blockchain parallelization all of that stuff but say has essentially been custom building block space which is for Consumer apps and dexes now they have some very cool features which enable that so twin turbo consensus optimistic parallelization say DB all of this stuff allows you to reduce the time to

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something like that you can actually build your own orderflow auction in and start recapturing a bunch of that me if you want to reach out to them go to devs flood. bid or just jump right in the Discord all right guys thanks very much appreciate you flood I'm looking for the chart here but what do you I mean this is what people have been basically arguing about which shows you how going on in the industry at the moment but what do you think about this because people I saw a bunch of people tweeting the old Kim Kardashian SEC you know indictments and stuff like that and then some people are like oh this is mass adoption and maybe it's you know who cares why would you be upset that ikia has a mean coin but what do you guys think well we're down almost 75% in less

than 24 hours it's an 8 million market cap mcoin and I think it's like very instructive as to where we are in the cycle you can like pinpoint it almost exactly celebrities know that they can make money doing these things but they don't know that it's illegal or some sort of you know law has been broken and like remember when like groon and like Kim Kardashian and like all those people were doing those promos and then like they've all they've all settled and then lit like three years L later they settled for like 10 times the amount that they got paid that's exactly where we are and and the the funny part is yeah exactly that that is not a bullish looking chart um no the funny part is I think there's been a lot of like well if

I don't get the call from the regulator in the first six months after I do this that I'm okay kind of perspective it's like it's not how it works no I mean there are there are digital receipts I don't even think like what they did I think look the problem with what they did is like the marketing side of it right it's it's not not a like unregistered security offering blah blah blah it is a I think particularly it's an FTC issue where you're you know promoting something and I don't know exactly how it was promoted or what was said maybe there was a lawyer advising Etc but you know if you are promoting something and you have Financial stake

in it there are laws around how you can promote that end of story what can you do this was this was your object permanence tweet which is or said a thing that he said on last week which is so true it's like if it doesn't happen to me instantly then I'm all good and that is not how it works if you go behind a wall that person no longer exists it's like this it's the same problem I I don't believe that this is on boarding anybody new to this space you cannot convince me that $8 million Doll Market capab mcoin has done [ __ ] from a washed up Australian rapper so I I think a lot of what this also looks like from a chart just like a macro chart perspective is like that bouncing ball chart of like the energy is

starting to fall out of the ball with each subsequent bounce and it goes like half as high as the previous bounce like $8 million you know market cap it's like sweet what what what do we make from that and I think that a lot of the speculative fervor of these things is is draining um which ultimately is a good thing yeah what is can we do a pulse check on mem coins generally this is I mean people were calling for a mem coin super cycle two three weeks ago and I don't know it just it feels like to me it just feels like the the weight of New Meme coins is it's like every day that you see something that pumps for like half a day now and then it's I I mean I

completely stopped pay attention I mean like the the winner of all of this is like basically jeto they're the people who benefit asymmetrically from like it doesn't need to beIN a b or c it just matters that they're happening and that there's meev to collect um I mean dog we've had is at 3.5 billion FTV which is actually pretty impressive and pepe is doing really well but like you're kind of now seeing this like flight to safety within the memec coin ecosystem what what's the Pumped out fun Revenue do they still have that chart I think they made 30 million Revenue so far that's what I saw this morning so like they're cooking too like I think that's also one of the proxies I

mean what what the creation of new stuff is pumped off phone in my mind and the trading of existing is jto yeah I mean they're both cooking I think what you're seeing though is like just based on how bad the New Meme coins are doing and and how strongly like dog with hat and pet bear performing it just feels like people are like okay I can't play the longtail stuff anymore like I just need to get into something that I think will go up you know pretty reliably which so then so then here's a good question if they become reliable latent kind of boring meme coins are they're still fun ex you still then therefore do you still have volume and trading activity and all of that if it's

a flight to safety isn't that the entire antithesis of mean points I mean that Anderson's Paradox I don't know but like it it feels like the game is like developing a little bit maybe like the celebrity coins of the next ones and like that does something else to it but I think there is uh some sort of like just realization that there's probably too many meme coins in the aggregate being launched so what do you think that says for pump off funds business I don't know I don't want to be a hater I'm a I'm a supporter in general but that just has the Hallmark of something that has sprung incredibly quickly yeah people are going to keep launching these things

and you know keep doing their their thing I think it's also like you're going to see somebody like I I'm surprised we haven't seen a bunch of pump. fun competitors yet I think that could be part of the next chapter um like you know like the Kumbaya moment of like you know all these things are working and pump off one's the only one who does it and like you know like it feels like that's probably the most at risk I mean in this analogy are we talking about meme coins as this rounds nfts and pump. fun is this round's openc SE could be and so is that is there a lesson to be learned from you know the openc Playbook I think the meme coins have more staying power than the nfts

just because they're more liquid you can have faster price Discovery like it's taken a long time for board Apes to bottom most of the meme coins bottomed pretty quickly you know after you know the crash whatever but I I would say mem coins are just like a better mode of speculation but that doesn't make them resistant to any of the market forces that you know bricked nfts in the day I agree with that yeah I I don't know I don't know what's what's gonna happen with the nfts I mean I know we talked about that a little bit last week but that's an interesting question Michael about the value of of these you know dog with hat coins is that they're

fun and like stupid and it's hilarious that it keeps going up and and speculation let's not forget that component but like once you get to the point of it not moving 25% in a 24hour period and you didn't just turn you know 500 bucks into 50,000 bucks and it's worth $3.5 billion like is it that much fun anymore I don't know I'm not sure what's and if there is a road map is that a problem I think it's a problem yeah I mean look like I've had so many bad takes on Meme coins that I would not be surprised if I'm wrong yet again but more of the game is played out and you

can kind of see like like it's when all those Unis swap dexes were forked back in the day and it was like which which Dex Community do you want to be a part of and then it kind of forced you to think pretty hard about why you would be involved in any of them H yeah I mean I also am not probably the person to but it but it seems like these these uh something that has value aside from just like the discounted sum of its future cash flow it has to be this weird it has to be it has to almost go in the opposite direction of utility it's like something that's a luxury good kind of like a vein good type thing I mean it's everything from like fancy restaurants where they charge you 10 times as much for a

quarter of the food you know to like designer Brands where they're almost insultingly offens like offensively expensive uh and as soon as you start to as soon as just imagine like Gucci trying to sell you based on like something that it actually does for you instead of like this is cool buy this you pigs you it just it doesn't work I think it it's negative I I also think that Meme coins do stand the best chance at Bridging the Gap between basically like real world culture and online culture and I know I mean it's it's cliche to say it but it's like through the meme it's actually relevant and therefore becomes like valuable and if you can find something that is an early meme or an early concept culturally you

can latch on to that I think like you know it's May 30th today when we're recording this like there's not that much going on other than everybody like patiently awaiting jury deliberations on a trump trial like there's not like a ton of crazy stuff going on otherwise and so I think there's just like not really that much from a culture perspective I mean maybe there is but you know when when the biggest things were Joe Bowden and and trim like those are hilarious like just the fact that you can bridge that is is I think a lot of the inherent value here as well uh it it it just kind of like what's the next wave of memes that people are gonna latch on to and

build tokens around you know what it's I I agree that memes are interesting and that they they tell you something about where the cultural sist is U they're kind of like comedians you know like you can kind of tell where power is located because it's whoever the comedians are making fun of because otherwise they'd be punching down and I feel like memes tell you a lot about where the Zeitgeist is at and it does does kind of bridge like hly I look at memes on Instagram or whatever as a way of being like okay this is how people are kind of thinking at the to totally you can get you can get a sense of the Zeitgeist and the culture and the vibe through meem but the other thing that I think is unique about meem coins is you don't have to have artwork that's

generated to be able to produce something where like nfts you had to build 10,000 pieces of art that people are like oh I'm just here for the artw it's like no can just come up with a meme in like a random thought I had on a Sunday night and like pump out fun created a token well you know what I would love to see more of these meme coins do if they're actually gonna be seriously like crank more memes out like it's so you know like Bon I think they were the original Salon of meme quein it looked like they were gonna run they were gonna run away with the whole thing and then they they launched a DEX and a trading bot it's like no no no you you don't understand what business you're in here like crank funny dog memes out that would have been way more bullish for but

but is it but is it incumbent upon Bon to do more memes or new tokens to do those new memes I don't know I don't know I mean say what you want Bon is three and a half billion and has like a couple billion of 24-hour trading volume yeah it's not it's not too bad uh anyway let's talk a little bit about I want I want to get your guys take on on so I I just missed this but I saw that uh ngmi U zerox ngmi retweeted it this week that a is launching its own chain and ens is also launching its own chain there's been rumors obviously

unconfirmed that Unis swap has been looking into this and makers endgame obviously has them launching a new chain as well and a lot of times when people talk about these big like eth based Blue Chips it's like oh is this good or bad for ethereum but I'm more interested in the question of what is the the value from the perspective of someone like a like I was interested to hear a was doing this because for me like a is still a borrow and lend protocol it I I would imagine it's critical for their business to be able to very little friction from people that have this massive Crypton native store of wealth in the form of people that hold eth to being able to deposit that e easily and it feels like them having their own

chain creates an additional friction there so I think it's kind of interesting to think about from the perspective of that like does this make sense for a bunch of these apps you know or what's you guys take on some of these big you know defi 1.0 Blue Chips launching their own chains I mean I I would expect their revenue from selling block space to be less than their traditional business so I like from a fundamental perspective probably doesn't do much for them from valuation perspective I think to some degree they're taking what the market wants regurgitating it back which is they want infra um but like the more of people that do anything the less valuable it

generally becomes so I think you'll see that um and yeah I don't think like you know maybe the new chain gives them a new way to align incentives but like it doesn't feel like it'll fundamentally change the trajectory of their business but I'm like losing count of how many l2s eth has at this point probably like almost uh and I would say that's like on the margins bullish eth you know just like more eth locked up in these Bridges more eth being paid in E fees and um I saw a chart yesterday that was basically the uh like the blobs were were full for the first time since Denon yeah and so I think like one of the things that we've talked about is like you know when that

starts to really work and when blobs are responsible for burn on L1 I think the market is just going to be it'll breathe like a collective sigh of relief in the sense that like okay cool the L2 red Map works and that will be like a major turning point for for eth in my mind and and that probably starts to happen this summer into the fall but it definitely is is happening in real time what one question point of clarification is a launching an L1 or is it going to be an L2 on eth I think it's an L2 I think it's an L2 yeah yeah I mean to to further Advance this point like I I think when the economics start to make

more sense where you have the ability to have infrastructure to get new capabilities whether it's block space block time you know what what that L2 is enabled but then you also have lower cost based off of dun and and blob space being what you're being charged it's just better to be on your own L2 and like the infrastructure servicing is a lot easier when you control it versus when you're having to rely on something else um and so I think we're going to start to see the application specific L2 thesis be the continuation of the broader L2 thesis and and potential movement away from just like the generalized L2 let's built on an Rober Trum So that we can get distribution so

that we can get usability etc etc and maybe this is more in the direction of super chain with optimism where you can just rip in and kind of have a L2 that you stand up with the same text St and you're devoting 15% of your revenues back to it but it's something that you can continue with into perpetuity the other thing I'll say about l2s is that like we we are now seeing the start of the L2 road map for Bitcoin take shape and I would say the results have been pretty mixed at best like Stax has I think 45 million in tvl which is number one for Bitcoin l2s but would be number 24 for eth l2s by tbll um and then you had things like Merlin

which like was generally just like a multi that people deposited into and like we've heard about like these like back room deals with you know you put tvl on a on a L2 and they'll give you some sort of like you know compensation for that and it's like kind of this very Insider sharky game but like I do think it is bullish when you kind of set out and say we're gonna we're gonna build nfts we're going to build BRC 20s we're going to build these l2s but when they don't pan out to the same degree of eth I think that kind of makes you weaker just optically like it like it didn't work you know we didn't have enough people putting Bitcoin on these l2s we didn't have enough engagement or enough Community alignment um and so I think that could be a major headwin for

Bitcoin and like you know I think what we're most helpful for are things like uh Babylon and bit BM and and other you know I would say higher quality l2s on bitcoin and those have not launched yet but the early batch has been kind of disappointing honestly and I think that dovet tales with like runes and ordinals and brc2 is also fading a good deal again we we own bit we own a lot of Bitcoin so like don't don't come after us but like this the uh this is the truth I agree with that so here's a I I agree with you entirely Vance but if I had to play the Steelman here for why some of these Bitcoin l2s might actually have the right strategy is if you think

about what optimism and arbitr did in the beginning they everyone kind of knew even when they were launching that ZK Tech was probably the end game but I think they correctly surmise like if we wait for that we're going to be way behind and let's just get something to Market where we can start accumulating TBL and getting chains to builds and all that kind of stuff and you could say that the Bitcoin l2s learned from the early versions of obviously arbitrum and Optimus are are you know 100 times more advanced than a lot of these basically multi sigs that are happening in the in the Bitcoin ecosystem but you could make the make the point that the same strategy holds and it's just like just get as much Bitcoin as you can and then build a tech deack later problem with that is that the

Bitcoin has like left these these multi like there was a a large degree of community alignment around ARB and op specifically when they launched that seem be happening Bitcoin land and like something doesn't work and then tvl leaves and then it's like how do we get it back and then people realize it's just five people deposit like I remember when everyone bridged their eth onto optimism like we were I think half of the TV in optimism for a while it was just like we were putting serious skin in the game for as long as it took um and I just you know we don't see that in in Bitcoin yet hopefully it it does happen I I think it also comes down to the nature of the asset itself for the almost entirety of the history of

eth it's always been used as you know a financial asset it's been used either as payment for icos in 2017 it's been used as collateral asset and defi started in 2018 2019 obviously defi summer it was it was the Prime feature of everything in 2020 but Bitcoin has always been like a let's I'm gonna hold on to this Bitcoin and I'm Gonna Keep it in my ledger and like I'm gonna keep my ledger in a safe deposit box and like I'm gonna come and check back on it in 100 years like it is it do not have the same characteristics from like the general audience I would say that you know you would see with eth um and so I think that's going to be another headwin just just breaking that that narrative

yeah uh well congratulations to Babylon I know Vance think you mentioned them they just raised $70 million today for Paradigm and um a bunch of other I don't know if you guys were involved in that one also but um pre previous round okay yeah in the seed but like those are like the high futin you know Tech approaches that are not just like these multisig and you know like reserve judgment until like Babylon launches and gets going um I think it just says a lot about who the early ecosystem of like mobile Bitcoin holders are and it's like kind of like this like same cast of characters that you know goes from Farm to farm without naming too many

names yeah which names are you the emperor the uh yeah his excen uh I I agree with that I think there's also going to be some challenges just around I'm not even technical enough to get into the Nuance this year but Bitcoin is a much less performing chain than ethereum just is 10 minutes 10 minutes is a while 10 minutes is a long time and and then the block explorers too when you're like wait what did I just do it's like oh okay cool pick one yeah like there's also just way less functionality on the base layer the UT utxo model there are a lot of drawbacks too it's just going to

be really tough sledding for a little while but there's also it it's also I think coincidental that a lot of these fundraises happened basically between uh October when it it looked like there was going to be a Bitcoin ETF and basically up until about a month or two ago um and now that we've gotten the may surprise of the eth ETF everyone's back on l2s it's kind of like oh really just where where did that come from yeah uh you're definitely right that it's not it's not just a coincidence that and there was also not

as much going on back then the market was kind of looking for a narrative and yeah I think like Bitcoin l2s was a subcategory of investment for about six months there yeah like there were so many that were coming to Market it feels like that's kind of died down too well everyone's now waiting to see what happens for the first crop to launch right like okay you guys just raised who's gonna be first out of the gates you know what could be you know what could be a uh like a a wild card here is this is really outside of my zone of confidence but it seems like stuff on the ZK front is moving a little bit faster than people thought that otherwise would it's been it's been moving quite slowly for some time now a long time but know there there have been

movements at the US patent and trademark office oh my God yeah we got to talk about this like before we talk about that like there was literally a point in time where people were like don't invest in rollups ZK is like around the corner this was literally like four years ago I was gonna say at Le like 2019 was that narrative and like some people like literally like didn't do any of the Roll because they were like the ZK Tac is coming yeah and and this stuff just like if you sit out at like because of tech reasons that's usually a pretty bad choice totally and I you know wasn't paying attention to this back then so I can't comment I'm sure a lot of people

were way wrong on it but the I don't know if you guys saw the announcement between succinct and polygon their a layer uh for sp1 but it's interesting because polygon has this they they acquired a bunch of ZK Tech I think it was like Hermes or whatever that they acquired a little while ago and they actually have a lot of Great Tech and they're building the CK evm and now what they're doing is announcing this partnership with um with succinct sp1 which is a generalized zvm and the the tldr is that it it uh there's been one of the challenges for teams that are building in ZK is that you have to build these specialized circuits and the specialized circuits are more cost effective and efficient but it requires

ZK gigar brains and there are just very few people that can do that they're super expensive and what ZK VMS are is just much more General I'm way paraphrasing here but much more General uh but much more applicable as well and so yeah it's just interesting that they're going down this direction and if they could make this work it would be cool I mean that that could be a big Tech unlock but but you're right it definitely we have to wait till to see it actually happen in practice because yeah it's been talked about forever evaluate evaluate when live yeah all right so we got to talk about ZK so zky zky it got I think starkware put out the original tweet that matter Labs

which is the labs entity behind ZK sync the L2 was trying to trademark ZK the word ZK and the founder Alex Alex Kowski from ZK or matter Labs responded that yes we're trying to we're trademarking ZK and it's not for any business reason we're not trying to you know put a ring fence around ZK or anything like that what we're actually doing is protecting users because you know Bad actors can co-opt ZK as a marketing message and then and then people can get served bad quality stuff I think everyone's been like I don't know about that dude um we we are officially trademarking eth as well um you me5 dollar every time you

say it I mean look is this is this even live is there chaining in life like you need to ship the chain stop trademarking [ __ ] yeah yeah the it's very difficult to trademark something that generic also I'm not even sure can do that we know this we know this yeah yeah it is uh you you can you can make an attempt to but it's hard to get it registered and then it's also like a weird process of who is the first to use it in like the wild basically and they kind of have preferential rights so you have to prove that you have a more preferential status than they do and Z has been around for a long time so expecting that you're just to be able to

like trademark a two-letter phrasee that refers to a math equation like it's just [ __ ] flip the chain crazy yeah that's gonna be an uphill battle well also not the best PR of all time but uh you know I mean we a good team just I agree this should go without saying but like anyone who's ring in on any sort of Ip rights when it comes to generally software but especially blockchains which are open source it's just like missing the force for the trees completely and you know we should not be relying on either patents or utility patents design patent like that that stuff should not be the basis of how you define um you know your moat

and I mean this this came out a couple weeks ago and we don't have to touch on it too much but like there's now a non-compete uh situation where you can't have non-competes allegedly is you know the FTC declared um and I think the waiting period is still alive but like that's another thing too it's like that hasn't existed in California so basically the entire software industry for you know the history of the last few decades has not been relying upon non-competes to to hold that to be true but it is an interesting element of like how do you define your Moote what is going to be your advantage and how you sustain that long term if you're if you're using you know IP rights or trademark registrations or non-competes um frankly I just think you're missing it what do you guys think

about something like the Unis swap uh business source license then that's expiring pretty soon here right exactly three three years from when they launched it which I think was in I think it was in 21 I mean at least they wrote code they didn't just like patent parts of the English language yeah yeah I'm sympathetic I I I'm definitely with you on the it's it's also it's a really nice ethos part of crypto that you just shouldn't be able to trademark stuff like that but I'm also sympathetic to like someone puts know millions or tens of millions of dollars into R&D and then someone can easily just Fork it but I guess that's the pros and cons of Open Source right well look I mean there are

once again open source license regimes and you know you're referring to one as well there's like the the MIT open source there's like there there are ways to find you know alignment through an open source license regime but what I'm more talking about is when you prevent people from using technology or accessing technology uh or accessing it without a license Arrangement um that's where I think you can't Define OTE and and software has been that way for a long time especially open source did you guys see the open AI uh dramaa that happened a couple of weeks ago around non-competes this is a pretty crazy clause I've never seen this but he there was a there was what some some

employee basically whistled blw on them and said hey opening a has got these crazy ndas where they actually claw back vested equity which I was unaware that that's even legal to do even if you acknowledge the claim that an NDA exists and then Sam Alman was like I had no idea about this and backtracked and offered to refund it it's like you probably did know about it what do we think of the cut of Sam alman's jib I'm I don't know there's a little it's dimin yeah jib is diminishing I mean di jib I think you use perplexity too right y I mean perplexity is the first AI app that I've been like you know what I

don't really need to use Google anymore and chat you use it by comparison you're like tell me about this thing that I kind of know about it spits out information it's wrong like if you didn't know that you know what the answer actually was like you just take that and run with it like I think chat gbt is in trouble um and I think open AI is going to get absolutely clocked here by competition that that's at least my view for to public opinion like going after scarjo who's like universally loved whose husband is Colin Jost who's like super Democrat deep State he did the uh White House correspondence like you come for those people like they're going to have a response for you real quick and like you know they're they're

cloaked in the like creative artist rights um movement and you know they've just picked a terrible place to fight this battle and a terrible person to fight it with so I think they're I think they're going to get a roote Awakening here in the near future I mean it's gonna it's going to be the defining well there there's also a lot of details that we don't know and so like the the discovery process is going to be interesting because apparently they had been working with this actor you know for like six months prior to them coming to SC Johansson two weeks before the launch and being like hey like we kind of want to use your your voice but just the fact that they went to her is a recognition in my mind that they were doing something a little bit out out of bounds but I I it seem interesting if

there's actually an actor behind this or not or if it's really just like a a voice um you know morphing of scarlet Scaro who actually created Sky it'll be very interesting um it's also I think hilarious that they're calling it Sky uh with an obvious connection to Skynet sky yeah there there's um it I I I the takee that I think is going to be really important especially with all of these AI companies is how do you how do you build the worker like the employee employer relationship um and and what I think people are going to

start to realize at these companies is that there are people at these businesses that have an unfair amount of information that is proprietary and incredibly valuable if in the hands of somebody else and I think that there's a recognition historically in Silicon Valley that you know there's a movement away from 90day purchase period for your options if you leave the company now if you know you're working at a white combinator company and you're there for two years you have seven years to buy those options if you you know there was this whole like you can work from anywhere but also if you work in the office there's free food there's all these amenities and like you have all these nice characteristics and like

there's no non-competes and that relationship I think is Fray like the social contract of people working at these like growth stage especially you know high growth stage tech companies has Frid especially here in in San Francisco and I mean Vance and I talked about this a lot it's like all the people who work at the like 100 to 300 person like series B companies that have you know a 50x revenue multiple on their last valuation it's like it's going to be brutal but I think you're also going to start to recognize at these AI companies where individuals have that unfair you that that like asymmetric potential to go and leave somewhere else and maybe start with the

basic construct of you know how to build chat GPT but for some other startup or maybe go and work at Google on their search engine product and that is going to be pretty difficult for those businesses and that's the first time where you're going to start to see an even further push in the frame of the social contract for these employees and I I'm not sure that like most of the people of those businesses are ready for that yet yeah it's it it's been pretty easy to be working at a at a Silicon Valley tech company for a long time there's been a lot of growth people haven't been particularly concerned with margins or anything like that and that's probably

changing relatively soon so yeah no more snacks no more free C Brew kiddos maybe maybe still free C Brew but I was listening to this podcast it's it's called the compound it's like this Trad pie podcast to it too they were like saying the funnyest [ __ ] they're like what if there was like like they're like what if the recession was already here in America but like it just like wasn't even Le D like like what if tech was like in a big recession and nobody noticed I was like you [ __ ] idiots like Tech is in like a depression like I don't know if you're one of those series B companies I'm hoping you're doing it because of the

salary not because the equity I think that's my takeaway if not go join Google or something if they'll have you they're not or or or hopefully you're doing it for the experience not for the compensation ah yes the experience love that experience but I I do think that open AI will continue to do well I I think that they will navigate the competition like Google has you know an open eye open AI size problem to advance to use your phrase but like it's real and they're coming at it and I know open AI is going to come at it too and I think this is going to be the way that Microsoft like through basically a proxy war competes

more heavily with Google um like that it's it's going to get really interesting but but opena is not here to go down without a fight they've got you know a $50 billion balance sheet for sure for sure I I was more even just making a comment specifically about Sam Alman no offense I don't know him I I could be totally wrong on this but he just has this tendency that I don't appreciate in people he's very evasive and feels very media trained and it just doesn't feel very honest when he's did did you see the article that came out yesterday in Fortune no the reason why the board got pissed at him originally back you know last fall is because they found out about chat gbt on Twitter

[Laughter] surprise oh I've never seen that clause in that NDA ever oh no no we're gonna we're gonna create a ton of jobs with this product there's gonna be no displacement of people's employment don't worry about that it's just he sounds like a robot when he speaks so I just do not trust him at all me either me either yeah I mean but my my take is this is like what this is basically like the frog in the water and the the heat has been turned on yeah like we're starting to notice it's getting warmer but just like a couple more of these things and we'll be at Boiling Point look the other thing

is like so perplexity is Raising at three billion right now this is the uh the open AI I guess competitor but I guess they also use Chach I think it's more I think it's more doodle competitor I'm just going to say they're all competitors because I think they all eventually will be they're competing for the same consumer surface area but like perplexity at three open AI at 98 like the amount of funds that have been raised off the open AI win and sure some of them are probably sold because of like that you know you need to get out at you know 10x or whatever but like if open AI has like a Down Round that's gonna be a very interesting look at some point because that is kind of what's powering the traditional Adventure Capital side of the the world at the moment is like this massive open AI

markup for a lot of people how about Nvidia it's AI on the public and private markets is at almost 1,200 bucks that's like what the hedge fund guys are eating off of yeah Venture guys are not buying Nvidia shares no no no no for sure but it's just funny that it's the same story on in public and private markets it's like I saw the I think their market cap got to 2.75 trillion larger than the entire Canadian Stock Exchange let's go I mean there there will be a time when that is uh I mean I I do think that there could be a little bit of turbulence at some point

for the whole Nvidia circus and how so so the the ma the math is they beat uh q1 earnings by two billion right and then four 4% and then that beat elicited half a trillion 500 billion of inflows into the stock yeah it's a it's a runaway for a trend of course uh but you know every single quarter they beat expectations they reset guidance higher and then they continue to beat it and and you know the stock is only a representation of where people think the stock will trade at this point like the fundamentals are not necessarily caught up with with the

value but I I think there's sort of like two paths you know that that play out right now you continue to see this like predictable Revenue growth and continued expectations beating and this looks like apple in like 2011 2012 where like the iPhone is just humming and people vastly underestimated the size of that business and that's how Apple became you know the most valuable company in the world but I also could see a world where they miss guidance and that sends a crescendo down and it's sort of like musical chairs in my mind at this point you will have a Miss of guidance you will have a crescendo down it's like when you're in a bull market in crypto and you've like

you know you're in a bull market when you see 25% draw Downs in like a week but then like it bottoms and then you come back up like we haven't seen that 25% draw down yet in Nvidia we'll see I think it's going to be a year or so before we we're in that type of I agree I think we're we're still in the infrastructure buildout and everyone is buying H1 100s like you know they don't have any other option yeah I want to give I want to close here just with a quick shout out back in our own uh backyard of crypto which is jeto launched staket this week which is uh I I I guess I should say I've got a small bag of jeto as a disclaimer I know

Frameworks investor but a longtime fan of jto they've uh Lucas has come on the Pod now for for many years going back and I just feel like staket didn't get quite enough attention it's a very cool initiative that they've done which is staket is basically releasing this um this set of rules or contract logic that is useful for staking pool operators to manage their validator set um and so they've taken a bunch of stuff that's historically been managed either by da and in sort of like an offchain and manual process and they've put it onchain and made it automated um which is super cool it's also transparent and if you're a data nerd and you like take looking at things like valid like where the validator set is and performance and

stuff like that just super cool it's it's honestly a public good I would say for Salon of the chain in general uh the other cool thing about it is I think there's a there's an opportunity to one of the challenges and one of the centralization vectors of staking pools in general is that the pool operator has to basically check in on where the validators are they have to it's a very manual process of submitting data and they kind of have to trust that the data is accurate um and so that's why lios has opted for a whit listed validator set for so long but there's an opportunity I think with reaking where you could actually allow the the validators like put up some amount of stake and opt into some kind of slashing condition to make sure that the data is actually more trustworthy so you could

get much more trustworthy real- time data about like um you know downtime geographical location all that kind of stuff so yeah I just think the goo team has been crushing recently and this was a really cool product that didn't get quite enough eyeballs on it so shout out to lot to jto J has some of the craziest charts in crypto yeah uh that's one uh I mean the main one is just the amount of uh the block they build which is going up basically every week they have this huge growth on their LST and then they get all the tips and bundles for Mev on jto which is like kind of lever the meme coin frenzy but I mean

these guys are just executed they're the flash Bots the Lio and the Igan Lair of of uh of solo it's it's crazy yeah and you know how many of them there are 14 yeah yeah look there's only 14 of us so you know different story I mean yeah wildly impressive yeah shout out to them they keep pushing boundaries it's awesome to see very very well we should maybe do at some point uh we did an episode with Eugene Jean from Ellipsis and Lucas a little while ago about these different directions that uh jeto is going and salana in general as their approach to Mev but there have been some more interesting divergences recently between ethereum and salana might be a good idea

to do like a little checkin on different designs yeah there's like um they're not going to do their burn mechanism that's just gonna be validators there's like the uh the fee market like being left as is or like change there's like a bunch of it's probably worth doing a goo refresh with like salon's future road map you know in in yeah especially as fire dancer I think that's still a little ways out but that's also coming down the pike too so yeah it'll probably be another you know 12 months or so yeah yeah all right fellas I think we can wrap it here later hey everyone want to give a final shout out to this episode's title

sponsor say now there are a whole bunch of really exciting reasons to be building on say the to outside of just parallelization I want you to head over to say. to looking into building on their public devet again click the link at the bottom of this episode and head over to say. start building something today